


Fatalism

by cavendished (noodlevampire)



Category: Little Witch Academia
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate title to this would be what I got from the James Bond Title Generator: Pussyfinger, And I am here to provide it, Espionage AU, F/F, Friends to Lovers, The world needs more savage Finnelan, also me: why does no one like my Original Content(tm)??, me: takes all my good jokes from spy comedy movies, oddly appropriate I’d like to think, woodward may be dead but that don't mean she gonna give croix any Rest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-09
Updated: 2018-08-08
Packaged: 2019-06-07 10:56:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15217643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noodlevampire/pseuds/cavendished
Summary: Croix Meridies is not a field agent. She's an analyst: cold, calculating, and safe behind her computer while she watches agents test her inventions do the dirty work. But Agent Woodward is dead, and the identity of all senior field agents have been leaked to the terrorist organization NOIR. Summoned to the field and paired with the mysterious Agent 20, she finds herself caught up in a vastly different and notably more dangerous world of espionage.A Spy/Espionage AU featuring the faculty of Luna Nova.





	1. Spectre

**Author's Note:**

> “The more identities a man has, the more they express the person they conceal.” ― John le Carré

A routine reconnaissance job gone wrong. She should have seen it coming, in hindsight, what with the nervous glances, the lack of guards. Not to mention who she was working with. Not that it was her fault, Chariot sighed, looking up momentarily while reloading her pistol before firing over an upturned table. Quickly ducking over her shoulder, she shot the two men running up behind her over the cowering body of the hotel bellhop, not waiting to see them fall before vaulting over the table and jumping out an open window onto the sidewalk below. She knocked over a bicycle in her haste, its wheels spinning long after she disappeared into the crowd.

She chuckled darkly as she concealed her gun and slipped into the dark mass of pedestrians, allowing herself to be swallowed to escape the screeching tires and heavy footfalls indicative of pursuit. The whole predicament was quite unfortunate, really. She rather liked this hotel.

  
  
14 DAYS EARLIER: 0600 HOURS, INTCOMM HEADQUARTERS

 

_“That is why I am probing the hearts of these people around the world— anger, hatred, sadness, jealousy, fear, anxiety— even though these people are ‘bad guys,’ that is what they do, not who they are. At the end of the day, they are just people too. Now, let’s continue, and let me warn you, the next 2 hours will get pretty dry.”_

_Tick-tick._

_Tick._

The second hand of one of the clocks was off.

_Tick-tick._

_Tick._

Croix absently watched the set of unsynchronized clocks set to the world’s major cities on the wall of the break room. The only analog technology in the whole Intelligence Command facility, and they were a half-second off, she mused, looking back down at the coffee machine in front of her. Mechanically, she slid the pot off the hot plate, watching the liquid steam as she poured it into the coffee-stained mug on the table. Silence wracked the halls at night, as permeable and present as a scream. She had been on the clock for 32 hours, listening to the silence – the buzz of the lights, the omniscient hum of her computers. 28 of those hours were spent in silence, combing over radio chatter, conversations about nothing. The coffee scalded as it pressed against her tongue.

_Tick-tick._

_Tick._

A loud laugh tore her from her thoughts.

"Meridies! How's my favorite analyst?" Agent 34 clapped her on the shoulder from behind, causing her to lurch forward and spray out her (admittedly, fourth today) cup of coffee onto the adjacent wall. Laughing, he and the other agent made their way from the break room into the hallway. "Try to keep it down on the reports, will ya? As much you analysts try to evade your beauty sleep, I'm not getting overtime for listening to your..." he put up his fingers and leaned back into the doorway, "chatter." The other agent with him laughed and they walked out of the break room, leaving her with the trailing echos of "if I have to hear one more goddamn conversation about some terrorists eating a muffin, I'm going to lose my shit," accompanying the sound of footsteps.

“CIA troglodyte,” she muttered, to no one in particular. If they left the Europe office yesterday, it wouldn't be soon enough.

She blinked through the familiar haze of sleep deprivation and saw the splatter of coffee before her, as loud and pronounced as a bloodstain. Napkins were nowhere to be found - no way to remove the evidence - and she was left with trying to wipe it with the tattered remains of a muffin liner. Scowling, Croix pushed up her glasses and looked back towards the door before heading back to her desk to pick up the folders for her next briefing.  
  
As she slid through the door to present her next 100 hours of dissected, analyzed, and interpreted NOIR chatter, she was met with the haggard faces of Director Holbrooke and MI6's branch officer, Finnelan, along with the current resident field agents all uncharacteristically solemn. Croix walked up to the head of the table and sat her binders down at it, smiling wanly as they shifted their gaze and 34 played with his pencil. It was Holbrooke who spoke up first, standing up to minimize her diminutive form. All eyes focused on her.

"Agent Woodward is dead." Croix felt the color rush from her face.

"She was killed by a NOIR operative known only as Draco, pictured here." She gestured at the large screen behind her, which pulled up the picture of a particularly menacing man smiling at the screen through his beard.

"This was taken from the footage we've received in the moments before Woodward's death." Holbrooke pressed a button, and the video feedback immediately started playing. A gun was cocked, directly into the camera. Croix watched, shellshocked, as he listed all of the agents currently sitting around the table, as well as some currently out in the field. Then the fire of the gun sounded, the camera toppled over, and the man, Draco, squatted down to look into the camera again.

"Let that be a lesson. NOIR knows all your agents. Don't try to come find me. Or do. I'll be waiting."

Another gunshot, and the camera fizzled out and went blank.

After a beat of silence, Holbrooke turned back around and pressed a button again. The screen filled with images of dead agents all around the world, each with a bullet through their heads.

"All of our senior field agents have been compromised. It's time we take drastic measures and begin taking in more qualified agents into the field. Agent Woodward's death had come as a shock to the agency, especially with her track record. Everyone in Intel had seen exactly what happened, and her senior intel agent, Beatrice, blames herself." Everyone was silent. And then her killer, a previously unknown NOIR operative, had smugly prattled off all the names of known field operatives, leaving Intel stunned and administration furious. Croix was flabbergasted.

"We know Woodward was your mentor, and that makes this news a bit personal. But you are also the chief analyst in charge of NOIR, and we want to know why this hasn't been on our radar." A brief look of quiet fury flitted across Holbrooke's features before sliding back to a professional demeanor once more.

"But, as it stands, we're under a lot of pressure right now, and you're one of the top scoring prospective agents. We need people in the field, now, to neutralize the NOIR threat, especially as our agents are being threatened and killed for no discernable purpose." The rest of the room was silent. Not even agent 34 dared to roll his pencil. All the eyes in the room turned to focus on Croix.

"We need you out on the field, Meridies. You know the most out of all of us of NOIR's intentions, and we can't afford to lose an agent they already know."

"Bullshit! Send me out on the field," Croix tore her eyes away from the benevolent face of Holbrooke to the direction of the outburst. Agent 009 leaned in towards Holbrooke in his chair, jamming his finger first onto the table before directing it at Croix. "Lookit 'er! She's a fucking analyst. What's she gonna do, shove a bloody calculator up 'er arse? Don't send a bullshit pencil-pushing analyst to do a real agent’s work. And how the fuck does this twat know our fucking names?"

"Double-oh-nine, we are not sending you out into the field, for the safety of you and everyone around you. Do you want to get yourself killed?" Finnelan looked down her nose at him from where she was standing across the room. Framed by the backlight of the screen behind her, she found the perfect opportunity to speak, having directed the soul-destroying lasers she called eyes away from Croix to the rogue MI6 agent. "And keep your petty insults to yourself. MI6 is not immune from the HR department."

"I'm not gonna get myself fucking killed. Look. We send me into the face off machine, I get a whole new face."

Finnelan put her head in her hand. "There's no such thing as a face-off machine."

“So you’re telling me that I sat through two hours of looking at Tom Cruise’s bloody fucking face in Mission Impossible, and he gets a fucking face-off machine, and a team of elite undercover agents don't have a face-off machine?"

"It could be a mole, or somebody may have hacked the system -- the information on most senior non-deep cover agents isn't kept on the Intranet anyways." Finnelan sighed.

"That's not the point. The point is that agents are dying out on the field, and we need to assemble a team of competent individuals to get out there and solve this. Meridies?" Holbrooke pulled the conversation back to its primary subject.

"W-well, I have never been out on the field. And I'm the only qualified agent who has information on every known operative currently and previously associated with NOIR. Even though Woodward was my mentor we have no direct ties in the office. Beatrice was her field assistant, so if they would have anyone on file, it would be her."

"Yes. And based on Meridies' last report, we know that there has been a spike of thefts of nuclear materials lately, mostly of the kind to be refined into nuclear warheads. On any other day, I would point to North Korea, but NOIR has been sure to let us know that they've got their hands all over it -- our people over at the CIA tell us that they've been receiving threats from NOIR as well."

"You've got to be fucking kidding me." 009 crosses his arms. "I'm telling you. I've gone in deep before, and there's only the other frenchie agent who's more successful than me. Let me go in."

"No."

"Listen, Finny--"

"Call me Finny again and I will stab my pen through your eye."

009 throws up his hands and stands from his chair. "Fine. I quit. And I know we have a face-off machine. Tom Cruise and those Scientologist fuckers are just keeping it from me. Y'have my two weeks."

Finnelan glares at the door as it closes shut, then turns back around to Croix.

"Meet me in my office in an hour."

 

0930 HOURS, ANNE FINNELAN'S OFFICE, MI6

 

Croix was not a field agent. 009 was right -- despite her classification, she wasn't an agent at all, really. She was an analyst, the top engineer for the quartermaster of the Italian AISE department under Europe's top human intelligence agencies. She made gadgets for agents, she didn't use them. The cycle of invention and testing was perfect stimulation for her ever-active mind. Yet here she was, fidgeting behind the dark ebony desk of senior MI6 officer Finnelan, the woman of reference seeming to find no amusement in the matter either, as she looked over her aquiline nose at her and shuffled the papers on her desk. It seemed even in death, Woodward would give her no rest.

"Your cooperation scores were atrocious, but the rest of your test showed great promise. Under different circumstances, I would not promote you, for your past actions," she sighed, setting aside her glasses and steepling her fingers. "The amount of chatter you go through, and the reports, they go way beyond the raw data. MI6 and AISE's Quartermasters are currently implementing your technological advancements to field agents, and we have seen production rates in the field increase by as much as twenty percent. I don't want to send you out on the field, because I know your comrades over at SISMI don't want to lose you. So I'm partnering you with one of INTCOMM's newer deep-cover agents, whose name wasn’t leaked to NOIR, from what we can tell. She’s certainly one of our best. I don't like _her_ either, so I think you two will be a good fit." She fixed Croix with a stare before turning the screen of her desktop and pointed at the grainy profile photo with her pen.

"She's a deep cover operative from the French secret service department, and she'll be your protection. If anyone is to make contact, it will be her. You are here to be our eyes and ears, nothing more."

Croix nodded solemnly, but inside her mind was racing. Who could be so deep-cover that their name wasn’t even on her level of classified network?

AGENT 20. CALLISTIS, URSULA. DGSE.

_She really doesn't trust me to take care of myself?_

"Completely understood, ma'am. Do the job and make no contact."

"Alright. Seeing as your last field agent entry exam was some time ago, we are going to have to send you back out to the training course. All agents are required to go for routine field practice. You will meet with your new partner there." Finnelan stood up as Croix did, and then offered out her hand.

“Welcome aboard, Agent 13.”

_Callistis, Ursula_.

The letters on Finnelan’s screen seemed etched into the back of her mind as she rode the underground back to her temporary apartment. The name didn’t strike any chords, but something about that face seemed familiar.  From what she could see from the action stills Finnelan had shown her, she couldn’t have been any older than Croix. But where could they have met?

She had gone home and immediately tried to research the name, but came up with nothing. The woman had no background, no family history, no school awards to be heard of – whoever she was, the French authorities were doing a very good job of covering it up. Nothing popped up under the alias of Ursula Callistis besides the death of a young child in rural France under medical records from over 50 years ago. Her interest piqued when she caught a glimpse of a familiar pixelated face in the background of a French entertainment article. Quickly she saved the image and zoomed in on the fuzzy lead, cropping the picture and emailing it to herself, before rushing out of the chair, its squeaks of protest following her as she knocks over boxes in her haste. She jammed her finger into the button of the nondescript box below a desk scattered with paperwork and drummed her finger on the desk as the monitor awoke and the machine hummed to life. Quickly, she typed in her password and pulled up her email, fumbling with the mouse as she clicked download and opened an application named UNFINISHED – DATABASE SOLUTION SYSTEM.

The seconds ticked by. She drummed her fingers against the surface of her desk.

Text flew by at unreadable speeds as her algorithm flew through databases of thousands of European servers.

The silence was maddening.

Restless, Croix slammed the drawers of her desk until she found what she was looking for – a pair of headphones and a beat up iPod. She flipped through the songs until she found the one she wanted, settling in the chair, ramen in hand. She was in for a long night.

Hundreds of documents began popping up, flooding her screen, each of them more confusing than the last. Some of them obviously had no connection, but the ones that did were completely at odds with one another. None of them seemed like spy work either. Every picture had her demure, passive, smiling.

They only went back about 7 years.

She had fallen asleep that night halfway through her third cup of microwave ramen with more questions than answers.

 

13 DAYS EARLIER: 0800 HOURS, INTCOMM TRAINING FACILITY

 

Croix fumbled with the front of her Kevlar vest as she buckled it in the dark locker room before putting on her helmet and grabbing a pair of safety glasses. Agents 34 and 62, already situated in safety gear save helmets, both looked at her with menacing smiles. 62 reached behind her and slapped a blue patch onto her vest. “You’re blue team with your … partner, if she exists,” she said, smiling and patting her own red colored patch on her chest, before heading out the saloon doors with 34 onto the training field. The rest of the red team followed suit, laughing and talking about lunch. She followed them into the training room, situating herself behind some black crates behind the team line. She peered over at the 6 other agents on the red team, all of whom were behind their own designated team line, and cursed her partner for not showing up. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught the French DGSE director talking to a silhouetted figure before walking across the field to the blue team line, silhouette in tow.

"This is Agent 20. She will be working together with you in the mission." Croix wearily eyed the bespectacled blue-haired woman in front of her, who immediately rushed forward to shake her hand enthusiastically and kiss her own both cheeks, never mind the fact that they were in the middle of training. She didn't dress much like an agent, from what Croix could determine from the dim blacklight of the training center -- in fact, she seemed more like the intel in the basement, in a burgundy tracksuit under her training Kevlar rather than a suit and tie like the rest of the agents. "Oh, sorry for my _empêchement_! You're the senior analyst on our NOIR operatives! Yes, thank you so much for your work! Much of it has been forwarded to me, I appreciate the thoroughness." The woman's warm French accent seemed to blanket Croix's ears, warming her inexplicably as she stared into that dazzling smile. She smelled like tea, expensive sweat-laced perfume, and something unplaceable yet familiar. “Y-yes, _con piacere_ , it’s nice to meet you too.” She frowned, trying to place the scent in her mind.

The sound of footsteps approaching made her snap out of her reverie as she heard calling from a member of the red team. Hearing more footsteps in the opposite direction of the voice, she peers over the crates, firearm ready, and shoots the source of the footsteps in the chest, paint splatter glowing neon under the blacklight.

“Hah! Nice try, Meridies!”

Agent 13 frowned, having seen the whole thing transpire. Then, before Croix could say anything, she pulled her gun over the crate and shot a volley of paint at the red team agent, covering his vest in splatters. “Fuck, alright! Fine! I’m bloody out!”

She dropped back down behind the crates and flashed a smile. “Yours was a good shot, _non_?”

“Give it up, 20!” A voice sounding like 62 wafted up to them from the other side. “S’just you and LaCroix against the five of us!”

“Oh _wow_ , LaCroix, real original, never heard that one before!” Croix turns her head to face Agent 20, and intones, much lower, “I actually never have heard that one before.” 20 just stared at her blankly, brow furrowed. Before she could think of a reply, another two red team agents rounded the corner, one on each side, and Agent 13 quickly shot the one on Croix’s side while punching the other in the gut and shooting him twice once he hit the ground.

“Hey, _Croissant_ , how about you put your weapon down and we play a little game called lets ‘pick on the new guy’! I’ll wrap that skinny tie around your little neck and sit you nice and pretty under my desk!”

Croix scowled, looked up, and fired right at Agent 34’s crotch before retreating back behind cover. “That felt good,” she smirked, looking at the nonplussed woman beside her. Agent 13 motioned to the wall in front of them, beckoning her to follow as she jogged to it and peered around the side. She joined her, flattening herself as best she could against the wall, clutching her paint gun at attention. Suddenly, a red-patched figure charged around the wall corner at Ursula, who immediately grabbed his arm, twisted it back, and threw him on the ground before shooting him in the chest. He groaned, and she let go of him and stood up, brushing hair out of her face and smiling at Croix. Croix opened her mouth to say “Thank you, 20, but I could have handled it myself,” but instead of actual words coming out of her mouth she made a confused noise as the woman raised her paint gun and pointed it directly at her before moving it slightly and shooting directly next to her ear. The shrieking pitch of tinnitus reverberated through her ear and she immediately tried to clear the sound with her finger, pulling off her safety glasses as she did so. As the last man called out (she was assuming, since she neither saw, nor now apparently heard him,) the end of the game, the lights flickered back on and an assistant strode out to meet them.

She watched red team file out back into the direction of the locker room, feeling as though cotton was stuffed in her ears, before turning around to the secretary that greeted them. Agent 20 was speaking as she re-hooked the gun to her vest, but no words were coming out of her mouth. Furrowing her brow, she looked at the secretary, who said something above the ringing.

“-to meet with you.”

“IT’S NICE TO MEET YOU TOO.”

Visibly trying not to laugh, Agent 20 led her out of the training facility and into the locker room, where she deftly unbuckled the straps of Croix’s vest before taking off her own. Croix tried not to stare as her new partner pulled off her vest and hung it up, revealing a set movie-star abs in the dim light. Suddenly self-conscious, she took her equipment off and hung it more carefully, trying not to reveal her less impressive figure. Thankful for the low lighting, she cleared her throat and adjusted her collar, trying to alleviate the sudden heat that threatened to creep around her neck. “So,” she started, a little too loud, judging by the other woman’s startled expression, “I have never seen you around here.”

“I’ve just returned from a deep cover mission tasked with infiltrating a drug ring. I had to convincingly play a backup singer in a tour band through part of it. We only secured the mission a couple days ago, but it was my longest assignment.” She took off her safety glasses and placed them in the bin, readjusting her glasses underneath. Croix stuck her finger in her ear, as if trying to physically clear it of ringing to hear her better.

A shrill beeping sound startled them both away from their conversation, Agent 20 visibly jumping at the tones emanating for her watch. “Oh, I have to take this,” she muttered, looking up when she heard no reply to see Croix staring blankly at her, finger in her ear. “Sorry. I’ll see you later, then. We’re meeting Finnelan again in an hour.” She projected this time, tone apologetic. With a short glance at her watch and a final wave, she sped out the locker room.

“Bye,” Croix finally called, to no one in particular, as if the presence of the woman who had just left was palpable enough to transfer the message to its owner. She was met with the quiet of the locker room – the banging of the agents in the room adjacent, the tinnitus and the deafening sound of her own inner ear.

So that was Ursula Callistis.

 

 

She met back up with Agent 20 outside the door to Finnelan’s office, Croix leaning against the wall and watching the news on the screens behind the secretary from her position in the hallway. Agent 20 had jogged up to her, sporting a demure, unembellished dark purple dress that hugged her waist under a burgundy cardigan. She had heard her before she saw her, a chorus of “oh, sorry!”s and “Excuse me, Excusez-moi!”s accompanied by the frenetic staccato beat of heels.

Croix checked her watch. “You’re… 10 minutes late.” She drummed her fingers against the wall, the only visible sign of her impatience.

She laughed, nervously, sweeping her dark hair to the side and tying it into a loose ponytail.

Before either could come up with anything intelligent to say, the secretary called them in with a curt “Miss Finnelan is waiting for you,” across the desk, and they stepped into the office.

"These,” Finnelan passed two nondescript brown envelopes across the table to them, “are your new identities. You’re both under me, as we’ve decided the Woodward incident will remain localized to MI6.” She gestured as Croix reached for hers first. “Meridies, you are now Sofia Moretti, systems accountant for the Italian software company Spasiodati, and you are currently going on a vacation with your fiancée, professor North, romance language teacher at the local community college in Sussex." Finnelan monotoned, gesturing at the dark haired woman sitting in the other chair.

"F-fiancee?" Croix felt her eyes bulge out of her skull as she tried not to choke on her own saliva staring at a picture she had drawn out of the brown envelope in front of her. The two of them were photoshopped onto the faces of a happy couple kissing on a beach somewhere strikingly similar to her hometown. "We try to tailor believable identities out of the agents' already known qualities, and that does includes sexual orientation, particularly for inexperienced agents like yourself." Croix tried not to look like she was having an aneurism in front of Finnelan, much to the chagrin of her superior. It suddenly felt very hot in that room.

Ursula just smiled, smoothly transitioning into a near-perfect English accent as she looked through her passport papers and replied, "of course, _cara mía_ , how else would we have met?" Finnelan gave the beet-faced Croix an exasperated look before continuing.

"You are going on vacation together to Budapest, where you will be staying at a hotel two blocks from a known NOIR base of operations." Finnelan glares daggers into Croix.

“You are to _observe_ and _report_. You will be ‘working’ across the street from this NOIR location gathering information and that is as sexy as it gets. Do you understand?”

“Yes ma’am,” they responded, in unison.

Finnelan stood up, the two younger women doing the same a second behind her. They all paused a moment, the monochrome London skyline from the windows setting the face of each woman awash in foggy grey light, a mask of feelings hidden behind solemn anticipation.

“Also. Before I forget. No agent-agent fraternization. It makes things weird. Keep your hands to yourselves.” Croix felt her face go through 5 different shades of red as she stared at Finnelan’s nose, trying to rearrange it with her eyes. “Report to the lab. Meridies, your boys will have your equipment and clothing for both of you.” She turned around, signaling the end of the conversation. Croix held her worn wallet in her hand, contemplating the blonde-haired woman sharing her face staring up at her. As they both made to leave, Finnelan called over her shoulder.

“Don’t fuck this up.”

As the door to her office swung closed, Croix let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding. “Not exactly the most confidence-boosting parting words, hm?” She glanced at the other woman, who was rifling through her own brown envelope and looking at the pictures she was given as well.

“Oh, this one’s cute.” Her face softened and she turned it around, showing a picture of her as a professor, with what looked like a group of barely-smiling teenagers. Croix squinted as she looked at the picture displayed in front of her.

“So those are your, uh, students? They look more like your hostages.” Croix chuckled at her own joke. She only received a look for her comment in return, and the picture was quickly folded into a nondescript black clutch wallet. “I’m just saying,” she floundered, trying to recover the conversation as she followed the other woman to the elevator.

Agent 20 pressed the down button and glanced at Croix as she caught up. They rode the elevator down to the lab in silence.

The doors rolled open to the sprawling clinical white floor of INTCOMM’s lab space, and Croix breathed in, feeling quite at home. A woman in a lab coat with MI6 engraved on it was waiting at the entrance to greet them, exchanging pleasantries before leading them over to their stations, where two nondescript black carts stood, with scientists swarming around them. In the midst of it all stood a short woman with a long braid barking orders at the surrounding scientists, which scattered like flies. As Croix and Agent 20 were lead over, she pulled the lab goggles back onto her hairline and looked up at them with a stern expression.

“Q!” Croix called, opening her arms warmly and looking down at the shorter woman. “Funnily enough, I’ve gotten a promotion!” She did not seem as amused.

“Finnelan had given me specific instruction to send you both with what you need.” She gestured to the two carts, and Croix immediately made a beeline for the one with the impressive gadgets. Nelson’s – Q’s – gruff voice sounded from behind her. “Those are not yours.” She looked at the other, much more Spartan cart beside the one she was currently ogling, and her face fell.

Nelson stood on the other side of the cart and began her briefing, gesturing at an assortment of seemingly random everyday items.

“Here we have a pack of three ramen packets that, with water, make a paste that can scramble radio signals when attached to the surface of a device.” She shook them and placed them in a cross-body bag.

“Individually wrapped chopstick packets that each contain keys that can open 90 percent of the locks in the world.” She picked up one that was already unwrapped and pulled it, revealing a key inside. She slid the top back on and threw it in a bin. “They’re also recyclable. That’s new.”

She held up a beautiful gunmetal grey pen. “This can record over 36 hours of HD footage and has a USB-C port. Click three times and hum the chords to _Besa Me Mucho_ to permanently erase the data.” She slipped it into Croix’s breast pocket and tapped the part sticking out. “That’s where the camera is. It’s nondescript and can work even in low light.”

“Exploding dental floss.” She picked it up and tossed it in the bag. “Also surprisingly good at getting things out of your teeth.”

“Says the one with a chipped tooth,” Croix muttered.

She picked up a bottle of what looked like sleeping pills. “If you feel you’ve ever been poisoned, chew one of these.” Croix stared at her.

Q then pointed at a watch. “This is the basic issue watch. It’s got two functions – night vision and sending emergency signals to HQ. Tap the crown as you would in Morse code and your field assistant will receive the message. Hold the face up to your eye and you’ll be able to see in the dark.” Croix looked down at the beat up watch face.

“How much am I supposed to like _Star Trek_?”

“A lot, apparently, if you have the watch.”

She held up a pack of cigarettes, next. She opens the case and then gestures at the first row, each with a small green band.  “Each of these has one blow dart that can be used to knock out someone for 30 minutes.” She then points at the second row, marked with red bands. “These ones will kill the intended targets within 20-40 seconds.” Nelson looked up into Croix’s eyes and raised an eyebrow, suddenly serious. “Hope you don’t smoke.”

“You’ll also have a phone and an encrypted laptop that will only open to your fingerprint. If it reads a wrong fingerprint five times, it will self-destruct. It can also be self-destructed remotely by the agents in intel.” She swept her hand over the nondescript black boxes in front of her.

“And, as a finishing touch, you and your fiancée each have matching rings, the diamonds of which focus a beam of light into a high intensity laser.” She slid the ring onto her finger and twists one section of the band, and cut a hole into the top of the cart. “How romantic.” She slipped it off her finger and handed it back to Croix, who slid it onto her left hand.

“Does the cross-body have missiles, too?”

Q sighed and rolled her eyes. “Underneath is your new change of clothes. Good luck, 13. You’ll need it.”

With those cheerful parting words, Nelson left to begin briefing Agent 20.

“ _Scusa_ , Donna.” Croix rolled her eyes at the honorific, but turned around as one of her lab assistants ran up to her. “The lady here is the senior agent, so she’s the one with the good stuff. After all, you’ve been specifically marked by command to be given as little as possible. However, we have been given clearance to allow you to bring your nanites onto the field.” He held up an inconspicuous eye drop container. “In here are a couple dozen of the prototype nanites, suspended in liquid to be undetectable by metal detectors. We figured that since they were your project, we should do you the honor of testing them on the field.” The man gingerly held out the bottle to her, smiling. She took it gratefully. She looked at Agent 20 – her partner – chatting amicably with her designated scientist out on the lab floor as she was shown a myriad of exciting gadgets. She looked down at her meager supply, frowning severely.

“Oh, and one more thing. A gift, from the team.” He grinned, reaching into his lab coat pocket and pulling out a thick red Swiss army knife. “It’s not any old army knife, either. It’s been outfitted with over 92 functions, including a small saw, throwing knife, flamethrower –“

“Flamethrower?” She watched as he pulled out a thin metallic nozzle from the army knife and grinned.

“Yeah. Watch this.” A burst of flame spurted from the top of the nozzle, illuminating their faces.

“ _Merda_.” Croix breathed, reveling in the ephemeral light of the fire. “That’s incredible.”

 He folded the flamethrower back into the knife and handed it to her. “ _Sì_. It also has a miniature medium range crossbow with 8 needle rounds, three of which are tipped with a neutralizing agent.” He handed it to her and she clapped his shoulder, turning towards the bathroom, disguise in hand. “You’re the best.”

 

 

She came out of the bathroom stall and set her hands down on the marbled countertop, centering herself. Croix found temporary comfort in the familiar red-black landscape of her eyelids. Blindly, she waved her hands in the sink until her fingers met the cool touch of water, and she splashed it onto her face. Toweling off with a napkin, she cast a perfunctory glance in the mirror, brushing the bangs out of her wig the best she could. The hair was short, fortunately, but she found it uncomfortable to stare in the mirror and see someone blonde. _They’ll see someone walking around with purple hair and spot you a mile away,_ Q’s gravelly voice floated into her head, an unwanted sense of conscience. At least they kept her sense of fashion and didn’t subject her to wearing a dress, or something equally as embarrassing; under different circumstances, she would have liked the outfit, a deep red turtleneck under a muted brown pantsuit.

The stall adjacent to her opened, and Agent 20 appeared, wearing a light grey pencil skirt below a striking navy blue blouse. Croix mentally scolded herself for noticing the way her thighs peeked out from underneath the skirt.  _She's your partner now, be professional._ As she walked to the bathroom sinks, kitten heels striking the floor, she popped out the lenses of her old oblong glasses and fit them into the perfectly oblong shaped holes of a new pair of square frames, then looked up at Croix, smiling. She put her glasses back onto her face and stood by her.

“I think purple suits you better.” Croix let out a huff of shaky laughter at the statement.

Ursula placed her hand on top of Croix’s, drawing soothing circles over the back of her hand with her thumb. She looked back into the mirror, seeing a haggard, sleep-deprived blonde staring back at her. The bottoms of the eyes staring back at her were ringed with the purple trophies of sleep deprivation, green irises dull and unfocused. A stark contrast of descriptions to her demure, beautiful, dark haired _fiancée_.

“Are you ready?” Croix watched as that disconcerting English accent fell from the mouth of the other woman in the mirror.

She locked eyes with her partner. The screaming voices of her anxieties stilled to a dull roar.

“Yeah, I guess I am.”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was the brainchild of me watching two very special movies to my heart and thinking that if I strung enough gags together, I could make an actual fic out of it. I'm trying to exercise my writing muscle, long dormant from an intense slumber. Of course that means I have to pick the two characters that literally have no age-appropriate peers they interact with for me to work with, and I have to spew out background OC's.  
> I meant for this to be a oneshot to practice for my real charoix project, an 80's flavored stranger things AU, but I'm 8k words deep into this and already started on chapter 2.  
> Anyways, Croix is listening to Quixotic by M.O.O.N., which I thought was suitably appropriate for the "intense hacker work" she decides to go through.


	2. A View To A Kill

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I heard you guys like angst, so i served you UST with a side of comedy and a tall glass of angst. I have no idea why this chapter took me so long, but it did. Hey, at least now we know a little bit more about our main characters!

 

“ _Per favore, allacciate le cinture di sicurezza e godetevi il volo per Budapest_.

 _S'il vous plaît, attachez vos ceintures de sécurité, et profitez du vol pour Budapest_.

Please, fasten your seatbelts, ladies and gentlemen, and enjoy the flight to Budapest.”

 

 

1530 HOURS, FLIGHT 1002 TO BUDAPEST

 

 

Immediately following their briefing, both agents were ushered out of INTCOMM and to London City Airport through a discreet back entrance. They shuffled to their seats without incident, the last two passengers to board. Agent 20 settled down immediately, crossing her legs and pulling out the magazine in front of her. Croix tried to entertain herself with the seat television as they prepared for flight, Finnelan’s words playing on repeat in the back of her mind.

_You are currently going on a vacation with your fiancée._

 

_Your fiancée._

 

As she searched through the offered movies, her mind raced. Why was she so preoccupied with this? Why had she developed such an obsession with the mysterious woman beside her? What had she gotten herself into?

She coughed, clearing her throat to hold the attention of her … _fiancée_ . Holding her page in the _High Life_ magazine, Agent 20 looked up at her above the rim of her new, rectangular glasses. “Well, since we’re… engaged,” Croix flails her hands around pathetically, avoiding the intense focus of those eyes, “we might as well get our story straight.” She suddenly wished the drink cart would roll by, to at least focus on something other than the look currently being directed at her. Then, fortunately, fond exasperation crossed her features and Croix felt the tension lift from the air around them.

“Okay. Good idea.”

“Okay.” Croix fumbled with the hem of her jacket and looked at the movie she had paused as she thought of what to say. She could feel Agent 20’s eyes burning into her ear, waiting for her to speak.

“Neither of us wants kids, you want to focus on your career and I think of all my wonderful students as my children,” she supplied, graciously, placing her magazine in her lap. “We met at a tech expo in Zurich, where you asked me for help because you didn’t know German.”

“But I do know German. It was part of the recon analyst course curriculum. I was the top scoring candidate in all of the required languages.” Croix blinked owlishly, not understanding.

“I kn- can we _please_ focus on the task at hand. You were the one who wanted a cover story.”

Oh. Right. “I guess. That’s fine.”

Sensing that was the end of the conversation, Agent 20 went back to her page in _High Life_.

Struggling to think of small talk, Croix blurts without thinking, “You remind me of somebody I used to know.” Ursula made a noncommittal noise indicating she was listening. She turned the page.

He died, a while ago. For a long time I blamed myself.” That caught her attention. She looked up at Croix again.

“I’m sorry,” Chariot spoke softly, expression softening. The hardness in her eyes softened into something soft and ambiguous like melting toffee.

“It’s fine. It happened a long time ago.” A pause interrupted the conversation, pregnant and heavy. Croix spoke up again, gesturing to her face. “It’s the eyes.”

The low ding of the airplane interrupted their conversation, indicating it was safe to move around the cabin. Some muttering about a drink cart next to her and a shift as Agent 20 lifted her head to scope the back of the plane. The flight attendants had not yet begun their rounds, and a soft murmur of conversation emerged between the passengers as they began to make small talk between themselves. Suddenly, Ursula clutched the arm of her seat, fingers pressing hard against the metal. Croix looked out the plane window, up at the indicator lights, and finally decided to acknowledge the obvious signs of distress Ursula was radiating from her chair. Suddenly, her irrational guilt trip felt petty in comparison to the jagged looks she sent her way, leg bouncing up and down in a frenzied, irregular fervor.

“Behind you. 8 o’clock.” As she spoke, Croix twisted her neck around to get a better look at what spooked Agent 20 so badly.

“Don’t look! Use your peripherals!” Agent 20 hissed under her breath. Croix sat back, looking straight ahead, eyes wide. “Do you see him?” She folded up her magazine and put it back into its pocket, slowly and deliberately. Although her head remained straight ahead, looking at the backseat monitor, she studied the surrounding area from the corner of her eyes. She jerked her head in a movement indicating Croix do the same.

Croix opened her eyes as wide as possible and stared straight ahead into the patterned seat cushion.

After a beat, she shook her head.

“I’m just… widening my eyes, I’m not actually seeing anything more,” she muttered under her breath. She felt the likely incredulous stare from the woman beside her as she continued to stare intensely straight ahead into the back of the seat.

“…okay. Here, use your phone.” 20 slid her hand into Croix’s pant pocket, and she stiffened immediately. She felt fingers deftly navigate to her inner thigh, and a huff of what could be laughter sounded behind her.

“You know, if that’s what you meant, you could have just asked,” a sly grin broke through her apathetic façade.

“Oh, stop,” she could see Ursula’s face turn pink, taken by surprise. The fingers retreated, and a phone was held to her, angled towards the back of the plane. “Do you see that? That’s a guy I’ve seen before, he’s a low tier NOIR agent.” She placed her finger over the face of a man at the end of the plane reading a book on what looked like … personal self-improvement. Her hand brushed Croix’s as she retreated back into her own seat.

She continued watching the man in the reflection of her phone, but couldn’t bite back her comment.

“Are you flirting with me?” Croix smoothly raised one eyebrow, nonchalant like she was discussing the weather.

“Of course not. Are you flirting with me?” Her ears dusted pink, but her retort remained coolly indifferent.

“N-no!” Croix spluttered, caught off guard. A beat. “Is it working?” She mentally slapped herself. _Why did you say that?_

“Of course not.” Agent 20 gave her a conspiratorial smile and they both held each other’s gaze before they looked away at the same time, embarrassed.

The plane landed without any further incident, the two pointedly avoiding each other as Croix sat in the chair watching a movie about a particularly animated and stupid American family and Agent 20 took a power nap, dozing off with her head on the window.

“Welcome to the beautiful city of Budapest, ladies,” a voice sounded in her ear as she walked out of the airport. She watched as Chariot immediately began hailing a taxi. “You will be looking to gather intelligence on a man only known as Fafnir, a wealthy stockholder and businessman who also makes a living as the intermediary between weapons manufacturers and terrorist organizations. Look on your phone.” Images of a stooped older man with a goatee and long white hair drawn into a ponytail flood onto the screen. “He’s currently suspected of fraud and insider trading, but we have nothing definitive on him yet. He’s here for an investment convention, but be warned, he’s a slippery bastard, and used to be a very dangerous character with connections to high-ups in NOIR.” She chuckled as she swiped through the images on her screen. Typical. The man was always present in the company of fancy cars, beautiful women, and obvious wealth.

She paused a moment, and zoomed into one of the images, looking at the burry collection of pixels that was his associates. No one looked even vaguely familiar, despite her experience working on NOIR counterintelligence. The realization brought her a sense of both relief and unease – this would be a mission entirely out of her element.

The taxi brought them to a moderate, unimpressive hotel out of the way of the main tourist area. They climbed out of the cab, Croix grumbling about how it felt less and less like _James Bond_ every minute as they lugged their bags to what she aptly renamed “The Shitz Carlton.”

“How many beds are there?” She asked, conspiratorially, while Agent 20 was busy grabbing the luggage and paying the cab driver outside. The receptionist gave her a look.

“Just one.”

Croix silently cursed Finnelan in every language she could think of as the elevator carried them to their room.

They stepped into the hotel room, and Croix set down her luggage by the couch. Ursula raised an eyebrow. “It’s not like I’m going to sleep much anyways,” she replied, by way of explanation, scratching the back of her neck. In lieu of an argument, Ursula simply shrugged, placing her carry-on on the mattress and unzipping the lid. She grabbed an unassuming black box and put it down on the mattress, flipping open the clasps with a satisfying click. She pulled out her red tracksuit along with a white tee shirt and slung it over her shoulder, watching Croix grab a blanket and a pillow from the closet and fiddle with her sparse sleeping arrangements. After watching her dither for longer than Croix would have liked, Agent 20 finally walked over with the black case and gestured to the contents inside.

“These are our methods of communication with our respective intelligence assistants. The contacts allow them to see what we see, and the earpieces are two-way communication devices. Intel is split into teams, and that’s designated by the color of this band around the earpiece.” She pointed at the small band of color decorating the otherwise nondescript, flesh-colored earpiece. “You’re team blue, and I’m team red. The girls in the basement will brief and assist you.”

She stuffed the receiver into her ear and immediately put the contacts in, blinking as she did so. Immediately, the voice of her assistant flooded her senses, a sudden overwhelming presence in her ear. “I’ll let you two get familiar with each other,” Ursula chuckled, and left Croix to her own devices while she went to shower.

Ursula stepped out of the bathroom to what looked like a catastrophe. Croix had pulled all the wires out of the telephones, repositioned the television, and removed the shades off of the lamps, discarded in a pile like a macabre impression of paper maché. Croix herself was sitting in the center of it all, pulling HDMI cables and SATA cables out of her carry-on bag and connecting in the laptop given to her by Q to the television as a second screen. The coffee machine had been turned on, and multiple plastic cups were strewn about on the table. Croix picked one up as the coffee machine beeped at her and ambled over to the counter.

“Judging from the mess, I’m guessing you won’t want room service.”

Croix at least had the decency to pretend to be sheepish as she surveyed her own organized chaos.

“Did you seriously bring cup ramen with you?”

“Of course,” she lifted the coffee pot and poured the hot water into her ramen. “I have to remind myself not to use the spice packets in my bag though. Good thing I came prepared.”

“That is… an unhealthy amount of tabasco sauce.” Ursula watched as Croix covered her cup noodles in the red sauce, stowing the bottle back in her pocket only when she deemed her heart-attack-inducing monstrosity complete. Smugly, she unsheathed a plastic fork and tasted her unholy creation. “Mmmm, _al dente_.”

Croix situated herself in front of her computer again. Ursula, who looked a little worse for wear, rubbed at her eyes underneath the frames of her glasses, before setting them on a nearby table.

“I’m going to bed. You should get some sleep too. Tomorrow we’ll need to be alert for our investigation of these NOIR hotspots.” She sat on the edge of the bed and watched Croix do her best hacker impersonation before switching off the bedside lamp and rolling over to go to sleep.

“Goodnight,” Chariot called, absently.

Croix did not respond.

 

 

_Falling._

 

_The distinct sensation of falling, the crippling fear of flying through open air with nothing but the dubious safety of a parachute – and one of them didn’t even have a parachute. They had been sitting, jostled by the turbulence, bathed in the harsh red light of the airplane. Each agent in training checked their safety gear, testing helmets and buckles secured. The red light turned green and each cadet, shaking in fear and anticipation, stilled at the omniscient call of the intercom announcing the drop zone. Of all the hundreds of things that could have gone wrong, she had pushed another cadet having second thoughts about jumping out of the plane. They hadn’t secured their parachute. She jumps out behind the younger cadet, and watches as the woman in front of her free-falls in terror. Her glasses register the agent's last name on her helmet’s heads-up display as she looks at the descending form, her eyes wide in sudden recognition._

 

_Du Nord._

 

_She’s had this dream before. Groggily, held back by the wind, she attempts to grab her fellow cadet, as she grasped helplessly in front of her at empty air. She watched as the other agent slowly faded from consciousness, eyes rolling into the back of their head._

 

_“Wake up, Du Nord!” Croix screamed, her voicebox battered from the buffering force of the air below her. She dove to try and grab her._

 

 _“_ _Wake up!”_

 

_Silence._

 

She jerked awake, plastic cups scattering to the floor. Vaguely, she could feel her neck damp with sweat. The clock read 3 AM. She didn’t catch her this time. It’s been a while since that dream had occurred. With a soft grunt, she got up from her cramped position on the table and looked at her work on the computer. Data from the companies Fafnir currently held stock in were being monitored closely. Numbers with no meaning. She idly clicked through her work, checking the documents she had found about weapons transactions. Buyers in Tibet, Iran, Uzbekistan, Venezuela. She scrolled down and frowned. A lot of business in Venezuela. Oil companies, insurrectionists, governments – she rubbed her eyes, pulling out the camera contacts and setting them in their case.

A soft snore broke her thoughts, and she turned over to where Agent 20 slept peacefully, silhouetted by the soft blue light of the city outside. Croix watched her in the darkness, a peaceful form breaking the harsh planes of the bed. Her head pounded – Silently, she got up and paced around her table, stepping over the cables and discarded items to where she had discarded her jacket earlier. She reached into the depths of her jacket pocket, blindly fumbling before pulling out what she was looking for. She flipped open the lid of the burner phone. The light blinked at her earnestly. Three new messages.

Checking behind her to make sure the other woman was still asleep, she quickly flipped through the messages. Two of them were unintelligible strings of numbers and letters – a poorly concealed code.

 

21:30 PM: NEW MESSAGE

“2143512351422232315355343442222142224232214351524223515321312311”

 

23:42 PM: NEW MESSAGE

“1343315523511131151331233542324413422143”

 

01:55 AM: NEW MESSAGE

“5123515523513331235155445132212221435521113115552351153255135523513145”

 

She read the message twice, checking the other two messages and transferring the amalgam of numbers onto a napkin. Blood rushed through her ears. The phone felt heavy in her hand as it illuminated her face in a sickly green glow, a grim reminder of the time. After a moment of deliberation, she snapped it in half and flushed it down the toilet, watching the whirlpool of water sweep the chunky electronic corpse away.

She rubbed her eyes and made her way back to the couch, laying face up and studying the ceiling. She traced patterns in the textured surface with her eyes until she slipped back into unconsciousness.

 

 

Croix woke up the next morning to the harsh light of the curtains being pulled back and illuminating the room. She blinked, squinting at the offending light, and turned her head to the other side. Distantly, she heard the sounds of Ursula stepping over the organized chaos laid out in front of her. “Careful,” she mumbled, burying her face into the crook of her arm.

The sound of the faucet turning on and off brought her from the remaining tendrils of her subconscious and with a sigh, she resigned herself to be woken up at the ungodly hour of 7 AM. Who woke up before 9? She passed that stage of her life when she graduated as a cadet – probably sooner.

A pile of clothes was tossed at her. “Here, get dressed.” She sat up and grabbed the clothes mid-air.

“Aw, man, really? This is what they had packed for me?” She held up a black mock-neck and turned it around. “Do I really look like a turtleneck lesbian?”

“You look cute in them. You look like a younger Cate Blanchett,” The other woman replied, vacantly, as she dug through the rest of her carry-on.

Despite the sudden heat in her face, she scoffed. "I look like Ellen Degeneres took a vacation, passed the wrong exit, and ended up in Canada."

Ursula snorted at that comment, before unzipping her tracksuit and beginning to undress, pulling her white t-shirt over her head.

Croix immediately turned red and looked away. It felt morally wrong to look at those abs. She grabbed the clothes given to her and practically ran to the bathroom to change for herself. Despite the familiarity she may have had with communal living spaces, she felt unnerved by her partner’s sudden sense of familiarity. It’s not as if they were really partners, after all, beyond the professional sense, of course. Yeah. Hurriedly, Croix dressed herself and got ready, looking herself over in the mirror before pulling on the unruly toupee and trying her best to flatten it to her scalp.

They had exited their hotel room to scope out the area, casually making their way to a busier street near the center of the historic district. The morning air was crisp and warm, a perfect transition from summer to fall. Agent 20 looked behind her shoulder at her wig clad partner, a small smile on her face. It was time to go to work.

 

12 DAYS EARLIER: 0800 HOURS, CENTRAL BUDAPEST

 

Croix had expected espionage. She expected sitting on a park bench, looking at people walking by, the thrill of tracking down their target, and watching their every move, using her skills as a hacker to infiltrate multiple layers of well-fortified digital security in order to gain access to private information. The thrill of the profession, the danger of it all, would pump adrenaline into every action of every waking day.

The last thing she expected was to be dragged by her fake girlfriend into a quaint little café. Agent 20 had ordered for them both with the flash of a smile before pulling her away to a table outside, overlooking the street. Sipping her coffee, Agent 20 crossed her legs and pulled out a phone almost identical to Croix’s INTCOMM-issued one. She lifted it up to her ear, gesturing for Croix to do the same. Each woman surreptitiously scoped their surroundings as their assistants briefed them. Well, Croix quickly found more interesting things to look at than the multitude of passing pedestrians.

The sudden voice in her ear startled her out of her _very inappropriate_ ogling of her partner’s hands after she had lifted the phone to her face. “Keep it together, 13. We’re here because there has been a lot of hot activity in a known location directly related to Fafnir and his arms dealing. There’s a hot trail for a large shipment of unknown substances being traced to businesses directly under Fafnir’s control.”

She felt her eyes draw, magnetically, to the mouth in front of her, partially open in a question yet unsaid, before darting up again to see Agent 20 staring at her evenly from behind her cup of coffee, a curious glint in her eye.

“There he is. The man from the plane, 5 o’clock.” Croix whipped her head around in her seat to spot the man in question walk towards a surreptitious building a block away Agent 20 stood up, knocking back the rest of her coffee and tossing it into a nearby trash bin. She looked down at Croix, expression guarded. “Stay here and cover for me.” She walked away from their table, reaching the street intersection before starting to cross.

Suddenly, a woman grabbed Agent 20’s arm, fingers curling around her bicep like a vice. Out of earshot, Croix’s only understanding of the conversation was the faces her partner was making – she glanced in the direction of the man they were tailing – Agent 20 obviously made incapacitated from the uncompromising grip of the woman, demurely gesturing and stumbling to apologize for her feigned ignorance. The man turned around to take a picture of the two of them and then started to walk faster, before accelerating to a jog. Table and coffee forgotten, reconnaissance electronics stuffed into her bag, Croix briskly made to stand up and walk towards the two women now causing a scene.

“We’ve got a friend,” the woman intoned into her watch, loud enough for Croix to hear. They made eye contact – two magnets attracted by their polarity – as she made her approach. As if in slow motion, the distractor let go of Agent 20’s arm and reached into her coat, a hint of metal all that Agent 20 needed to see before springing into action and grabbing her by the throat.

Somewhere nearby, a lady screamed.  A gunshot sounded.

Her target ran off, Croix in hot pursuit – pushing people out of the way, ducking under outstretched hands, running into a drink cart. She skidded around a corner only to find the man jumping over cars, running across the stationary traffic to the other side. She let out a ragged breath, shaking her hands at her sides (she hasn’t run this much since training) and started running between the cars. Halfway through, the light turned green, panic alarms blaring inside her brain. She attempted to skid over the hood of the remaining cars, taking a running jump – and instead, body slammed herself across the hood of a taxi, sliding to the other side. As she made it to the opposite sidewalk to the accompanying cacophony of car horns, her pursuant rounded the corner and disappeared into an alleyway.

Dimly, she registered Finnelan’s severe voice shouting at her from her field assistant's mic. "No! Do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars, Meridies!" She scanned the narrow parkway, eyes locking on to a parked moped. She ran over to it, jumping on and immediately looking for the wires in the handlebar. She ripped open the front compartment, cut the wires and shakily pressed random wires together. As the moped sputtered to life, a man ran out of an adjacent store to yell obscenities at her.

“We’re not people who steal motorbikes and chase after people!” Finnelan yelled, louder this time, “That’s CIA crap!”

Fumbling with the wires, she kick-started the moped and sped in the direction of her target, yelling “sorry!” over her shoulder as she drove off. She caught up with him fairly quickly, the man jumping through a crowd of people and customers eating at a restaurant, Croix speeding through the tipped tables and scrambling people. She pushed the motorbike further as he rounded a corner, footsteps echoing on the stone pavement. Blood rushed in her ears as she saw the man scramble into a dilapidated building. She barely avoided crashing into a parked car as she skidded to a stop on the cobblestone road and carelessly discarded the moped. She followed him, jogging up the stairs with labored breaths as she struggled not to let the man get away. As she neared the top of the stairs, she drew her gun from the inside of her jacket and rounded the corner. Heart in her throat, she scanned the area. A loud crash came from her peripherals and she spun around, pointing her pistol at open air. He had to be here somewhere.

The sound of a knife behind her forced Croix to turn on her heel to face a tall figure, made more intimidating by ragged breathing and looming posture. The metal glinted in the early sunlight, and he moved towards her at the same time that she focused her gun on him.

“The safety’s on,” he leered, twisting her arm and throwing the gun to the floor. Both of them watched for a moment as it skidded to a halt by the edge of the platform. Raising her knee, she elbowed him in the stomach, where he fell back, scrambling back onto his feet, before lunging at the discarded gun on the concrete. She kicked her shoe into his ankle, feeling a sick sense of pride at the sharp cracking sound her blow elicited. His face twisted into a sour expression of pain and anger and he limped at her, brandishing the knife in his hand.

Duck. Dodge. Duck. Try to counter. Fail to counter. The knife grazed the side of her arm as she evaded his wild, desperate strokes. As she evaded him, she moved back to the precipice, and made the mistake of looking down at the long drop to concrete below. As she lurched forward, she miraculously grabbed the arm of the man and pushed him sideways, digging his knife into his own abdomen. The momentum from Croix and the combined force of the knife wound caused him to lurch to the side over the edge of the unguarded balcony.

Croix watched in slow motion as he fell back, clutching at the self-inflicted knife wound with wide eyes. A sickening thud and following crack announced his contact with the pavement with the same solemn finality as the thud of a gavel. She peered over the edge to see the man’s head oozing blood like a raw egg all over the pavement. A sudden wave of nausea clutched at her as she reeled back from the scene.

“Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god.” She clutched her hands at her hair, muttering obscenities in frantic Italian. Croix dimly registered the quick, precise pace of Chariot running up the stairs behind her and charging onto the balcony, gun drawn and ready. Her hair had flown out of her loose ponytail and it trailed behind her like a thick blue curtain. “I killed someone,” she breathed, ears filling with static white noise instead of the urgent voices surrounding her from inside her ear and out. Panic attack, she registered, calmly, as if it was some mildly interesting information rather than a compromising emotional condition; compromising to the mission and to her partner—partner in question having begun her descent to the recently deceased man below them, stepping over pools of blood and viscera.

She leaned over the handrail at the bloodied mess below. “We have to dispose of the body.” She immediately began to roll up her sleeves and tied back her hair with a spare hair tie, tossing her head back to look up at Croix, who had reigned in her panic attack to a much more manageable look of mild terror. “Hold this,” she said, as she rummaged through her bag to find a pair of latex gloves and a small folded white plastic square. As she began unfolding the piece of plastic, the realization that this was not a piece of plastic but a _body bag_ suddenly hit her like a freight train. She spurred herself into action and jogged to the bottom of the stairs.

Quickly, her partner rummaged through the dead man’s pockets, checking his wallet for an ID and any information she could. She handed Croix the wallet, and kept patting his pockets, bending down to check all possible locations in his jacket. As she stood up, she caught Croix depositing the money he had into her own bi-fold. Her eyebrows shot up to her hairline and she gave a long-suffering look from above her glasses.

“What? He’s already dead, and there was about a hundred euro in there,” she laughed, shakily.

There was still a dead body between them, and the two women descended into quiet as they began the cleanup process. Agent 20 handed her another pair of latex gloves, and began moving the man’s head to stop the bleeding.

The silence was punctuated with grunts as the dead body was wrestled into the body bag, head lolling to the side as Croix jostled forward. The bag crinkled and stretched with the new addition, clinical white mixing with deep wine red in intricate marbled patterns. The gaunt face was the last thing to disappear as Agent 20 pulled the zipper closed.

“All right, I’m going to find a car, so we can dispose of him. I need you to make sure there are _no witnesses_ while I’m gone. Check the camera to see if there’s anything useful to us.” With a final look around the abandoned courtyard, Agent 20 handed Croix the body bag, gave express orders to stay there, and checked the exits before running out of sight. Left alone with the company of a corpse, Croix had nothing better to do than what she was told. She clicked through the pictures on the surprisingly undamaged camera, wiping a smudge of blood off the view screen.

"Oh god, is that me? It looks like I've died and been embalmed," she quickly deleted the candid photos of her and Agent 20 taken by the NOIR agent. A picture of a shadowy figure across the street at night. As she deleted the images, she stumbled across a photo of the interior of what may have been some apartment or hotel.

“Can I get an enhancement on that image?” She pointed at the background of the already zoomed in picture in the camera’s view screen. A table in the apartment, void of any personal items save for a black notebook and a water bottle. In the corner was a slip of paper with what looked like hastily scrawled script. It could be anything, but Croix had a hunch and wanted to follow through.

A moment of silence before her assistant spoke into her ear again. “The image is coming up now. It looks like … a phone number with an area code assigned to Russia.” Sounds of typing indicated a pique in interest. The seconds ticked by as her assistant looked through files and made connections, Croix patiently waiting and flipping through the rest of the pictures.

”Doing some research, I’ve found that he’s hosting a dinner party for representatives of the companies he’s invested in at his summer home in Russia.” Some shuffling of papers was heard from the other side as files were pulled. She flipped around the rest of the image, scouring the man’s living space for any more clues. Nothing caught her eye beyond the paper and the conspicuous lack of mess within the room.

“This may also be where he keeps all of his personal ledger information. Woodward had filed data on Fafnir’s postings and locations of work as well as residences, but due to biometric encryption, we don’t have access to his underground business operations beyond the trails we discover from intel.”

A battered car rounded the corner, shaking Croix from her thoughts, and Agent 20 stepped out with an apologetic expression on her face. Well. “Sorry, I wasn’t expecting to steal a car, but MI6 says any vehicle under such short supply is beneath their budget right now. Something – something about politics.” They both grabbed an end of the body bag, and with no small amount of grunting, apologizing, and awkward shoving, they fit the corpse of the dead man into their car. Both women stepped back to admire their handiwork. The white bag gave Croix a macabre image of groceries, a sack of potatoes thrown into the back of a car, and she shut the trunk fiercely as if to ward away her thoughts. As they rounded the car, Agent 20 froze, a small voice ringing from her ear. Her back to Croix, the lines of her back tensed as she was given rapid-fire instructions from her side of the line.

_The positions of multiple ultra-deep cover agents have been compromised. We came this close to losing you again, Callistis. We need to find that damn mole!_

Finnelan’s voice, loud and dangerous in her desperation, seeped through the earpiece of the woman in front of her. Silently, she turned around and left her partner, slipping into a nearby public restroom.

She still could see the image of a pool of blood oozing out of the man’s head seared into the back of her eyelids. She stepped into the bathroom and closed the door, pinching the bridge of her nose and sighing. She turned around to open the door again and slid out the bathroom to wash her hands in the sink, avoiding the haggard face staring back at her from the mirror. A familiar cockney accent floated through from the other stall. “Ain’t as easy as it looks, innit?” The stall opened on a large old woman in what looked like a repurposed circus tent. She tugged at her face until it peeled off of her like a second skin.

“ _Merde_ ,” she hissed, running her hand through her fake hair. “How did you get in here? Didn’t you quit?”

“Course not, I told Finnelan to shove it up ‘er arse.” Agent 009 smugly crossed his legs from his clothed position on the toilet seat, dress rustling as he did so.

“‘cause her, the one you’re parading around with, and I? We’re real spies.” He pointed out the door at where he assumed Agent 20 was.

“Once, we both appeared convincingly onstage as Madonna,” he gestured, pointing at his gaudy attire. “At the same time.”

“In drag?” She gave the living circus tent a pointed look.

“She once carried me, injured, for twelve hundred kilometers across the Italian countryside, all while disguised as the hunchback of Notre Dame.”

“Wait, what? The Notre Dame is in Paris.”

Instead of a retort, he pointedly ignored her and continued on his tirade. “You’re gonna ruin this mission, Meridies. You’re an analyst who can’t even hold a gun. Don’t think I didn’t see that little stunt you pulled.”

“You’re not even supposed to _be here_ , let alone be tailing us! Mind your own damn business!”

“Are you trying to get your partner killed?”

“NO,” she said, a little too forcefully. She tried again, more even this time. “No.” She let out a breath through her nose and slipped into her persona of haughty apathy. It felt good to slip into a role she knew so well, as she turned to face the man wading in fabric. “Perhaps you should keep your mouth shut, with your infamous track record of blowing your cover in favor of theatric stunt work. Unless you’re so hardcore you don’t need to follow the rules.” She crossed her arms and leaned on the countertop facing him with a scowl.

“At least I _have_ a track record,” he stated, simply, getting up from his seat and picking up his belongings.

He pulled the latex mask back over his head and stood up, ending the conversation. “See. I told you there was a fucking face-off machine.”

He left the bathroom, whistling as he placed a coin in the tray on his way out.

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you can guess and decode the cipher, you get a cookie. If no one can get it, I'll just post it with chapter 3. Please leave me comments if you liked it! That's what keeps me alive.  
> Oh yeah, and I made a tumblr if thats what you're into. Find me at [here at Quantumsketchbook](http://quantumsketchbook.tumblr.com)

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first fic I feel really confident about posting, and it's an amalgamation of my favorite spy comedy movies. Oops, no original content here.  
> Feel free to leave comments and criticism below, but please be gentle.


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